


Group Therapy

by airedalerd



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, I'm Bad At Tagging, a bit of plot, also my first fic here so sorry in advance, attempts at humor, contains flirting, i have no idea why i thought this was a good idea, i just wanted to include captain jack there's literally no other reason for his presence, i should have just gone to bed instead of writing this, this is basically crack
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 06:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21222173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airedalerd/pseuds/airedalerd
Summary: Dr Derek Hann sat in the chair furthest from the door, clutching a pad of paper in his lap. He was nervous, not that he would ever admit that fact. It was the first session he’d run on his own at the Stormcage Containment Facility and he wanted it to go well. But, due to the fact that he was new to working at the facility and the fact that he was to play therapist to a group of seven individuals who’d committed crimes so horrible they’d ended up in Stormcage, he doubted he’d be that lucky.





	Group Therapy

Dr Derek Hann sat in the chair furthest from the door, clutching a pad of paper in his lap. He was nervous, not that he would ever admit that fact. It was the first session he’d run on his own at the Stormcage Containment Facility and he wanted it to go well. But, due to the fact that he was new to working at the facility and the fact that he was to play therapist to a group of seven individuals who’d committed crimes so horrible they’d ended up in Stormcage, he doubted he’d be that lucky.

The first prisoner arrived, walking slowly between two guards. The prisoner was huge and had stony grey skin. Large black spikes protruded from all over his head. Hann blinked. He’d never seen this species before. The prisoner looked at him with big, black eyes. The doctor blinked again. Those black eyes were replaced by the most vivid blue eyes he’d ever seen his life. And then, in less then a handful of seconds, he’d blinked again and the eyes were gone. Back to that cold, empty black.

“Take a seat,” he said to the prisoner. The prisoner looked at the available seven of the eight chairs that had been arranged in a circle before choosing to sit in the seat to the right of the doctor.

Next, entered a woman who looked like a lion, closely followed by another woman who looked like she belonged to one of the Silurian subspecies. Hann had met plenty of those before. The room began to fill up as the next prisoners arrived; a clawed, red-eyed Trimestrian woman and a bipedal primate who the doctor had also never encountered before.

The sixth prisoner to enter the room accompanied by a pair of guards was a pink-skinned woman. Her skin was so translucent that you could see a swirl of golden blood flowing underneath her skin and her hair so silver that it shone with the light of the moon. She was tall, lithe and fluid in a way that seemed to suggest she spent much of her life moving through a jungle. Hann had never thought he’d see an Aurumrosi - according to the legends, they’d died out centuries ago.

The very last to enter was yet another woman - but this one was different than all of the rest. It had only taken a second for Doctor Hann to reach that conclusion and it would take a while before he realised exactly why she was different.

A woman like her was not intended to be kept in a cage, that much was clear to him. There was look in her eyes that was wilder than the unrestrained curls of her blonde hair. On her, the khaki pants and a tank top the prisoners were required to wear seemed more a fashion statement than a punishment. Her lips seemed to fall automatically into a permanent smirk - one that hinted at both boundless fun and unrestrained danger.

“So, is this it?” The woman asked as her eyes scanned the other prisoners. She didn’t seem impressed, but the doctor felt that nothing impressed her much. She seemed like the sort who’d seen a lot in her time and had reached the point where nothing really flustered her anymore.

“Yes, you’re the last to arrive,” he answered her. She looked like a human as well to him, but he knew better than to assume. There were many things that looked human in the universe and many of those things were anything but.

A long-suffering sigh escaped her lips. “Oh, I do so hate being late,” she commented as she moved and plopped herself down into the last available seat - the one directly across from the doctor himself.

“Makes me look like a bit of a hypocrite when I tease Him Indoors, you see,” she added, tapping the side of her nose. The gesture was confident - almost intimate - and definitely out of place in Stormcage. If Hann hadn’t known better, he would have said she was flirting with him. And he did know better. She had said she was married, after all.

Once the curly-haired woman had taken her seat, the doctor shuffled the notes in his lap before he began the session. It helped to be organised, especially when you were surrounded by a group of people who’d committed crimes so atrocious they’d been imprisoned in Stormcage.  
“To begin with, I thought we’d introduce ourselves,” he suggested.

No one looked particularly pleased with communicating with each other, so he decided to begin himself to break the ice a little. “I guess I’ll begin then,” he said. “I’m Dr Derek Hann, human from Androzani Major. I studied for fourteen years, practised for six years before being offered a job here in Stormcage. I was assigned to you all last week and have spent the time since preparing our sessions.”

No one batted an eye. Honestly, he wasn’t sure if any of them were even listening to him. If any of them were, he suspected it was the curly-haired woman. Her eyes were trained on him, but it was as if she was looking right through him. The corners of her lips were lifted just a little as she smiled at something he couldn’t see or a thought he couldn’t hear.

“How about you go next?” He asked the prisoner to his left.

The scaly, green reptile flicked her forked tongue. She bared her teeth in a wild grin before she spoke. The curly-haired woman actually leaned forward in response, looking interested for the first time since she’d walked through the door. Perhaps she'd encountered Silurians before.

“I’m Kosme. I’m a Warrior, a Great Warrior, fighting for the glory of the Silurian's. I protected my tribe by trying to rid of the surface of my world of those horrendous apes-” the reptilian-human looked over at Doctor Hann with something like hatred in her eyes, “-and was sentenced to this cage before I’d shed nearly enough blood to wipe the Earth of those abominations.”

Doctor Hann had to stop himself from raising his eyebrows at being referred to as an abomination. Instead, he scribbled a quick few notes on his pad of paper while the blonde woman smiled with a look in her eyes Hann didn’t even know how to describe.

_Kosme [cos-may] - Silurian - Genocide  
Hates humans. Be careful of TONGUE._

After he was finished, he gestured for the next speaker to have their turn. It was the Leonian, with a mane of ginger hair and wide, almost flat nose. She let out a soft growl before she spoke, the whiskers sprouting from her cheeks twitching as she spoke.

“Leone,” she growled, tapping her chest once.

“Do you feel comfortable telling us why you were sentenced to Stormcage?” Dr Hann asked the lioness.

“Planet-burner,” she told them all with a satisfied smile. “My children were hungry, starving, so I cooked some meat.”

“Oh,” Hann responded as he realised exactly what she meant. Burning a whole planet to feed her children. People had been imprisoned in Stormcage for far less.

_Leone [LEE-ohn] - Leonian - Mass Murder  
Cares about her children. Bit of a psychopath. Likes FIRE._

Doctor Hann wrote his notes then gestured for the introductions to continue. Next spoke a humanoid with a face full of withered tendon and gristle. His long blonde hair was tied at the nape of his neck while his blonde beard was decorated with silver.

“I, Captain Harg,” the bipedal humanoid spoke, the tusks joined to his lower mandible shifting as he introduced himself. “Harrowkind. Pirate.”

_Harg [hAR-g] - Harrowkind - Piracy  
Bipedal. Man of few words._

The doctor finished his notes then turned to the curly-haired woman. 

“And what about you?” He asked her, but she wasn’t looking at him.

No, her eyes were trying to see something behind Harg’s large head and mass of blonde hair. She was frowning, lips open just a little as she tilted her head to try and get a better look. She didn’t succeed in getting a good look at whatever she was looking at, because that was when she spoke.

“Harg, that was your name right?” She asked.

Harg nodded, confused.

“Harg. Lovely name. Do you mind just moving your head a little? I just want to see-”

The woman trailed off as Harg complied with her request. Doctor Hann followed her gaze to see she was looking at the noticeboard. He glanced back at her. The lady with the space hair wasn’t frowning anymore. No, in fact, she was smiling.

“Sorry, dears,” she said as she stood up. Her hands smoothed over the wrinkles in her clothing then moved to fluff her voluminous hair.

“Sorry for what?” Doctor Hann asked. She hadn’t done anything, as far as he could tell anyway. She hadn’t even introduced herself yet.

“Well, it looks like I’ve got mail,” she said, walking over to the noticeboard. She pulled the piece of blue paper Hann had noticed earlier from the board and looked at it for a second, presumably reading whatever it said.

“Mail? We don’t get mail in here,” the Trimestrian woman who hadn’t yet introduced herself questioned.

The other woman - the one with the hair - smiled wickedly as she turned to face them. “Oh, I’ve never been part of that wondrous ‘we,’” she said.

“What does it say?” Kosme asked.

“It says, “Yowzah,’” she answered, lifting her eyebrows and licking her lips as it was the most delicious thing she’d ever said in her life.

“I don’t know what that means,” Kosme said.

“Oh, neither do I. Not really. No one does, except him of course, but don’t tell him I said that,” she said, a finger warning them all to stay quiet on that subject.

“Who’s he?” Leone asked.

“My husband, obviously,” she said as she shook out her head of hair. “It’s date night.”

“You can’t leave, the guards-” Dr Hann said quickly, standing.

“I can’t leave? Oh, well, I guess Him Indoors will just have to go find some strange planet to occupy himself for a moment,” she mused, “or perhaps I’ll just waltz on out the front door.”

“That’s impossible. This is Stormcage-”

“Impossible? Certainly not. I’ve done it plenty of times before. How else am I going to make sure he hasn’t messed up everything again? Honestly, I leave him alone for two days and somehow he breaks the universe, messes up our timelines and blames it on wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff as if that isn’t just complete and utter nonsense,” the woman said just as a wheezing sound filled the room. No one said anything to that. They were all too confused and shocked to comprehend anything she was saying.

Behind her, a great big blue box faded in and out of view. Eventually, the box materialised fully after letting out one last wheeze. The woman smiled.

“And there he is,” she said, turning to look at the box with an affectionate smile. “You’re late!” She called.

“What-” Doctor Hann began to ask but stopped when the door to the blue box opened.

From behind the door popped out a young man with slicked-back hair, a top hat, a fancy dress suit with tails and a waistcoat. He wielded a cane in one hand and smiled at the woman.

“Sorry about the delay, dear, traffic was hell,” he told her, smile widening into a grin.

“Where are we going? I do hope it is somewhere interesting,” She asked him, looking at him over her shoulder.

“Fishing,” he told her, his face splitting into a wide smile. He stepped from the blue box and spun around on his heel, brandishing his cane. The man’s brows rose as he ceased his twirling with a flourish, pausing and giving his wife enough time to look him over.

“Very nice, darling. You put Winston to shame,” she responded, almost indulgent in her reply.

Her husband smiled in response. “Ha! Knew you’d like it, hat and all.”

“And fishing? You’re taking me fishing?” She asked him, incredulous. “I’m living in a prison - which, need I remind you, is entirely your fault - and you think taking me fishing is a good idea for date night? I’d love to ask what your logic was there, sweetie, but we both know you prefer to not use that unless you have to and even then, it’s a bit spotty in its application. Fishing, honestly. You’re utterly ridiculous sometimes. Besides, do you even know how to fish? You can barely keep your bowtie straight as it is, my love.”

Her husband’s face contorted into an odd sort of pout as his wife talked. He clearly didn’t like that his wife thought his plan was rubbish. He quickly shrugged away his pout though as he pulled a worn blue book from his jacket.

“Diaries then?” He asked as he flipped open the book and began to turn through different pages.

The woman pulled a matching book from seemingly thin air. She opened her book as well and began to look through the pages. “Have you done dinner on Teegarden?”

“Yes, but that was a while ago. Remind me later to never let you heckle Sontarans during karaoke night ever again - I still haven’t got those singe marks out of my best suit,” he responded. “Proxima Centauri?”

“No, not yet, but I’m looking forward to it. I heard they make a fabulous fondue and the caverns are supposed to be incredible. Dancing on Pho?”

“Oh, yes! And that was a recent one, too. So you must be about deep-sea diving on Beta Tauri, then?” Her husband asked, pausing flipping through the pages of his book as he waited for an answer.

“Did that last week - loved the wetsuit, by the way. It clung in all the best places.”

“Perfect. I know where we are then. Shall we be off, wife?” He asked, holding out his hand to his wife as he prepared to whisk her away. A light blush coloured his cheeks.

Before his wife - the prisoner - could respond, Doctor Hann spoke. “You can’t go anywhere, let alone go fishing,” he told them. “You’re in prison if you hadn’t noticed.”

Her husband looked around the room quickly, as if just noticing that he and his wife weren’t actually alone after all. He frowned and blinked a couple of times, almost as if he wasn’t sure if he had just imagined all of the newcomers.

“Oh, you’ve made some friends, River!” He said excitedly, after apparently deciding that they were all, in fact, real. “Can I meet them? Or are they the sort of friends you think I shouldn’t meet because they like guns and doing lots of bad things I wouldn’t approve of?”

“Friends? Oh, sweetie, no. This isn’t a friendship circle,” the woman named River admonished. “Though they are certainly people you wouldn’t approve of. That is unless you’ve suddenly decided to start accepting planet-burners as companions?”

The man actually looked disappointed to find his wife hadn’t made any friends but not particularly concerned about the sort of company his wife kept. 

“Planet-burners? No, not recently. Well, not that I know of anyway. Could’ve done, but I probably haven’t. So what is it then?” He asked, frowning and taking a few steps further from his vessel. “Some sort of seance? Love me a good seance. A prayer circle? A game of Chinese whispers? I’m not very good at that game but I’ll play all the same. One of those clapping games that human children play? I quite like Miss Mary Mack. Played that with a young Florence Nightingale once. Ooh! Is it a dance battle, dear? I do love a good dance battle.”

“Don’t you just want to slap him sometimes? Utterly ridiculous, honestly,” The woman asked the other prisoners - both flippant and teasing - before turning back to her husband. “We’re not doing any of things and for your information, dear husband, most dance battles don’t occur while the contestants are seated.”

“But they can! And I would know! Been in a few of those in my time. Once lost to Aristotle, Captain Cook and Diana Ross. Those three play dirty,” he said to his wife as if to warn her to never participate in one with those three. 

He took a good look around at each of the prisoners, frowning as he looked at one uniform-clad prisoner to the next. “So what is this then, hmm?” He asked his wife, moving closer and slipping his cane-free hand around her waist.

“It’s a therapy session for imprisoned psychopaths,” the woman named River said, instinctively leaning back into the younger man.

“Really? They have those?” He asked, his head moving over her shoulder to get a better look at them all.

“They do indeed,” River answered.

“Maybe I should host one on the TARDIS one day? Though I don’t know about the imprisoned part. I guess I could always just settle for ordinary psychopaths but would that be as fun?” He questioned, seemingly talking to no one in particular as he moved around his wife to be closer to the lot of them. The man tapped her on the nose as he went past, eliciting a smile from the curly-haired woman.

“Do whatever you’d like, sweetie, as long as it doesn’t eat into date night,” River told her husband.

“Oh, right,” he said, remembering his reason for coming to Stormcage. “Date night.” He smiled at all of the prisoners. “So, we’ll be off then but I promise I will, in fact, bring River back when we’ve finished fishing.”

“We’re not going fishing,” River quickly interjected. “Dinner, maybe, followed by a quick revolution sounds much better. Or a bit of dancing? We haven’t gone dancing in forever. I’m sure Charles II would love it if we paid him another visit.”

“Oh, yes we are going fishing! Fishing is the plan and we are following the plan that is fishing,” The man said quickly, spinning on his heel. His wife followed his lead and he slipped an arm back around her waist as they moved towards the box that read, “POLICE”.

“So long!” The man called as he disappeared into the box.

“Tell the boys I’ll be back in time for breakfast if I’m driving, but not till next month if I let him have a go,” River told them all as she shut the door of the capsule.

The last thing they heard was an injured cry of “Oi!” from her husband followed by the wheezing sound again. The box dematerialised from view, leaving Doctor Hann with only six other prisoners.

Hann blinked once, then twice before he dashed over to the intercom on the wall. He pushed the emergency button roughly.

“Hello, Guard 019-785 speaking. What’s the problem?” A voice said through the speaker.

“Doctor Hann here. I was just ten minutes into a session and the curly-haired woman just escaped!”

“Curly-haired?” The guard questioned. “Do you mean Doctor Song?”

“All I got from her was her first name. River. She left with a man in a blue box that appeared out of nowhere-”

“Oh god, it’s happening again,” the guard whispered. “One moment,” he added. 

Suddenly, sirens sounded throughout the Stormcage facility alerting every guard to the fact that a prisoner had escaped.

“This has happened before?” Doctor Hann asked. Surely, he should have been warned about this sort of thing before they gave him this assignment.

Tne guard chuckled darkly. “Oh, too many times to count. Every night, really,” he answered once his laughter had subsided. “Did she say if she’d be back?"

“She said she’d be back in time for breakfast,” Doctor Hann answered.

“God, let’s hope so or there’ll be hell to pay,” Guard 019 said. “I’ll send a troop to you now to return the remaining prisoners to their cells. Therapy’s cancelled for the day, Doc.”

“Thank you,” Doctor Hann, turning off the intercom and turning back to the remaining prisoners who were still sitting in their seats.

Most of them looked shocked. Stormcage was supposed to be the most secure containment facility in the universe. No one was supposed to be able to waltz in and out of the compound like thousands of security protocols, armed guards, three-metre thick walls and countless other security measures couldn’t stop them. It was impossible. Or, at least, supposed to be impossible.

There was only one person in the room who didn’t seem all that surprised by the current turn of events. The prisoner who had been seated next to him - the big grey monster with spikes poking out of its skull - had disappeared. It was replaced by an attractive human-looking man with dark hair and vivid blue eyes.

“Dang perception filter,” the man muttered to himself, banging at the watch on his wrist that looked suspiciously like an illegally modified vortex manipulator.

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Doctor Hann asked. Part of him felt like he should call for more guards but there was something about the human that didn’t seem particularly life-threatening.

“Oh, sorry, I know I’m not supposed to be here, but honestly, I found out this was where she was and I just had to get a good look at her,” the man said, just as the troop Guard 019-785 had sent arrived.

They cuffed the prisoners, pausing for a moment when they reached the intruder. He raised his hands in surrender.

“The name’s Jack,” He said. "Captain Jack Harkness, if you want to get personal."

“Where’s Inmate 61463?” One guard asked, pointing his blaster at the man named Jack.

“Who?” Captain Jack asked, confused. “Oh, you mean the big grey thing? Bit spiky? Not too pretty? Uh, yeah, I don’t think he’ll be coming back anytime soon. Kind of traded places with him,” Jack said with an unhelpful shrug of his shoulders. “Honestly, it was worth it. She was definitely something to look at - that hair! - and well, he always tends to be a bit of a looker. Bit gangly, this go around, don't you think?”

“You helped an inmate escape?” Another guard asked, completely ignoring the other apparent nonsense that he’d spouted off at the end.

“I guess,” Jack responded with a shrug.

“You are now under arrest for aiding and abetting a condemned criminal, possessing an illegal item in a secure facility and for trespassing onto the said facility,” the first guard said as the second shackled Jack.

Doctor Hann stared after Jack as he was escorted out of the room with the other prisoners.

“See you next time, Doc!” Jack called back to him.

Hann stood in an empty room, brain a bit fuzzy from how quickly events had transpired. He moved back to his seat and picked up his notepad from where he’d dropped it. He stared at the last thing he wrote.

_Curly-haired woman. Crimes unknown._

He crossed it out and updated it with the information he now knew. After he’d heard the guard say her name, he’d realised exactly who’d ended up in his therapy session. The most psychotic psychopath of them all. A bespoke demon with lips of fire and a look that could kill. The woman who’d committed a crime so horrible she’d been sentenced to 12,000 consecutive life sentences. All for the murder of a man; a good man. And by all accounts, the very best man. 

_ <strike>Curly-haired woman. Crimes unknown.</strike> _

_River Song - Humanoid - The Woman Who Killed The Doctor  
Dangerous. Do NOT trust._

Below that, he added;

_JACK??_

Once he finished, Hann slowly started to walk from the room. He turned back once to look at the noticeboard where somehow the man in the blue box had left a note for his wife, before shaking his head and closing the door behind him. His friends had said he was mad for accepting the job at Stormcage. For the first time since he’d begun to work for the facility, Dr Derek Hann thought they might just be right.

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it this far, thank you for giving my first fanfic on here a read! 
> 
> I'm not quite sure if it's any good, but hopefully, it's not terrible? I haven't edited in the slightest so... I'm sorry for any mistakes, I'm sure there was many.
> 
> If you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear them. I might continue this - I have a couple of ideas - but I don't know if it'd be worth it. 
> 
> Again, thank you very much for reading.


End file.
